Did you ever do any of the EAB exams, Alex ?
I did the 'mezgrada' one, but the 'altgrada' one was just taking the **** so i failed it.
I'm not even kidding, those guys are intense...... they expected me to be translating and analysing stuff, which was so ridiculous that i wouldn't even have been able to do that with if it were in english to start with !
I'm not even kidding - we're talking about excerpts from esperantised versions of Shakespeare and the Illyad and stuff like that.
:P Then they expected me to do the same, but the other way around - putting antiquated incoherent english into esperanto.
They also had the cheek to chastise me for inventing my own words, even though that's SUPPOSED to be part of the whole idea of esperanto : that even if there is some obscure word for something, if you don't know it then it is just as valid to make a 'stuck together' word which means the same thing.
For example, one excerpt which i translated from esperanto into english then had to answer questions about, was an anthropomorphised piece about a horse, and it declared that "he chased the filly, then one half of the world swung alongside the other" , and i was meant to say what was going on.
I actually had to ask my mum about it, in order to get to the bottom of it in the end, but maybe i am just too innocent !
For those who, like me, are baffled - my mum reckons that this was a flowery way of saying "they did the horizontal samba" .... which was news to me ! (O.o)
I think that is definitely not the right way to go about being an examinatory body for esperanto....
The EAB seem to be really weird, though.
They sent me both of my certificates (for the beginner and intermediate exams) in esperanto, making them nearly worthless for showing that i have achieved anything (for example, for inclusion in my Record of Achievement for employment purposes) ....
This being the case, i wrote to them expressing my civil dismay and requesting the certificates in english. They wrote back, i thought a little indignantly, declaring that esperanto is a perfectly good language, that english is not superior, and that employers ought to learn esperanto rather than the EAB keeltowing to their lack of esperanto skills.
I wrote back saying that this is all very well and all, and yes esperanto is very nice :if i were opposed to it then i wouldn't be learning it to such a level in the first place, but that the fact remains that for the forseeable future nobody other than a small minority of people can comprehend my certificates, making them pretty much worthless as an indicator of skill level, which is the whole point of having a certificate at all.
They wrote back saying that it was ok because most of the people they give certificates to are pensioners who just have the certificate for display purposes, so it's irrelevant what language it's in.
I wrote back saying that was all well and good, but I am 22 years old (which i was at the time) and thus not a pensioner, and would not be for a very long time, and could i please just have the certificates in english, i have paid you guys £10 for the two exams and successfully passed them, and all i want is to receive a certificate which conveys information about my achievement, so that i can put it in my Record of Achievement.
Without further comment, they wrote back asking me to send in my certificates, to see what they could do. A while later i received them back, with an english translation scrawled on the back of them both, which was signed by the examiner for authenticity purposes :P something about the whole process seemed fundamentally unsatisfying.